The invention relates generally to methods and systems to reduce database maintenance. More particularly but not by way of limitation, to a method and system for identifying changed database records by monitoring internal database information to determine which maintenance utilities are necessary to run. Thereby a schedule and focus of maintenance functions may be identified to optimize database maintenance.
Information Management Systems (IMS), available from International Business Machines Corporation, provides a robust environment in which multiple users may have concurrent access to data for use by multiple application programs. Maintenance primarily consists of backing up the data and information required to recover a database should some type of failure occur and a facility to reorganize the database to assure optimal access to the data. Backup processing (image copy) is required periodically so that should a recovery be required, there will be a recent copy of the data to start with prior to the event. Logging maintenance is required to capture, store and register all the changes that occur to the database during application program processing. Database updates captured on the logs will be applied to the image copy to reproduce a database should a failure occur. Finally, database reorganizations optimize access to the data contained in the database that over time becomes disorganized (fragmentation of a database record) due to the update activity that occurs after the last database reorganization.